Friday, April 29, 2005

Jumped

Yesterday afternoon one of my best buds from the block got jumped after school. She was harassed last summer by the same girl, and had to go to the emergency room at that time. My bud has a scar along her right cheek, back toward the ear, as a souvenir of that encounter. She and her family did not press charges at that time.

Since then, I think this other girl has been verbally harassing once in a while, but there hadn't been any fighting until yesterday. I got home last night and there was a trembly message from my friend: "Hi, Maureen. This is ______. Can you call me as soon as you get home? Thanks."

I called and she and her mom came over. I didn't even look at their faces until they were on the living room sofa. "So, what's going on?" I said. Then I looked at her face. This time the girl really scratched her up--a nasty red cut along her nostril, a thin red line from the cheek across her upper lip and a weird X mark near her temple. "God, honey! What happened?"

She only cried a little. They showed me the police report but said they didn't know whether this girl had actually been arrested, and asked me to come to school with them in the morning to find out. She wanted to know what to do to prevent more scars. Today a coworker told me buckwheat honey is an ancient scar remedy, and she even found some research that explained why, so I'll go look for some.

This morning I thought they would ring my doorbell before they went to school, but they thought they were meeting me there, so I was late. They were just talking with the assistant principal when I arrived. He explained that if the girl was in school today they could press charges right away. He went to look for her and we waited in the office while my friend wrote up her account of the incident. She wrote "Beach" for "b-tch" so I spelled it for her. It's always hard spelling because I'm never sure whether she thinks in Spanish alphabet or English first. "Stupid b-tch" is what the girl called her, apparently, before breaking out the talons.

Her mother is afraid the school will not do justice to the situation. I asked my friend what she wanted, and she said, "For it to stop."

There's two months to graduation. I can't wait until she gets out of a 1000 person school and into a 100 or so person school. Crap like this is much less likely to happen there.